


Psalm 19

by mikkey_bones



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Boats and Ships, Culture Shock, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Theology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkey_bones/pseuds/mikkey_bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They always seem to meet by the water.  Floki wants Athelstan to listen to the trees.  Athelstan wants Floki to listen to the Gospel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psalm 19

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to give Athelstan a chance to talk about his own religion while learning about that of the Northmen. Of course Floki would indulge him in this conversation, at least for a little while. See the end for historical notes.

Athelstan is squatting by the river, washing his habit, when he hears the gravel crunching beside him.  He pays no heed to the sound, assuming it is Bjorn, coming to sulk at him, or Ragnar, coming to harass him.  He’s surprised, then, when someone new squats beside him.

“Well met, priest,” the man says.  He looks familiar in the way that twisted corpses with agonized expressions look familiar now.  He is as familiar to Athelstan as the coppery smell and taste of blood.

“Hello,” Athelstan replies warily.  He knows where he has seen the man before, and he shifts his weight, prepared to run if need be.

The man grins.  He paints his face like one of the Northern women, Athelstan thinks, but the dark substance runs under his eyes and gives the general impression that he is completely mad.  “My name is Floki,” he says.  “And you’re Ragnar’s priest-slave.”

“My name is Athelstan,” Athelstan replies.  “I am not a priest – not exactly.”  He is a monk more than he is a priest, a brother more than he is a father.  He _was_ a brother, at least.  Not for the first time, he wonders: can he call himself a brother if his family, his brothers are dead?

“And Ragnar tells me you are not a slave, either.  Not exactly.”  Floki smiles at him.  Athelstan can see all of his teeth.  “Will you come into the forest with me?”

Athelstan frowns and leans away from Floki.  “What?” he asks, rejecting the proposal immediately in tone, if not in words.

Floki seems to take it as a matter of linguistic difficulty.  “Will. You. Come. Into. The. Forest. With. Me?” he asks, thrusting his face even closer and enunciating every word with great care.

Athelstan realizes he has asked the wrong question.  “ _Why_?”

“I want to show you the trees,” Floki says.

“I need to stay here,” Athelstan replies, lifting his drenching wet habit up from the water.  “I’m busy.”

Floki yanks the brown habit from his hand and tosses it down into the water.  With a yelp, Athelstan leans forward and grabs at it, nearly overbalancing.  As he stands, lifting the habit with him, he quietly thanks God that he did not fall flat on his face.

“See?” Floki prods.  “You’re standing up now.  Be a man, and walk with me.”

Athelstan learned even before he was captured that manhood to these Northmen is different from the manhood he learned as a boy.  But there is a hint of childish daring in Floki’s tone, and Athelstan recognizes it.  He remembers the games he played outside, long ago, with his blood-brothers.

“I want to show you the trees,” Floki repeats.  “Don’t be _scared_.”  He grins again.  Athelstan is quite sure he is mad – madder than the rest of them, even, madder than Ragnar and his wife and their children, and that is mad indeed.

Though Ragnar says he is not a slave, Athelstan knows differently.  He no longer has a rope around his neck, but he is yet bound to these people.  He hesitates, but steps forward anyway, draping his dripping habit over a fencepost.

Floki claps his hands, and dances around Athelstan, who shrinks away from him.  “Good, good, walk!” he crows.

“I do not know where you want me to go,” Athelstan says as he drags his feet along.  They sink into the rich, dark loam.  This is a good land, he thinks.  Though it is cold, and the growing season is short.

“To the trees,” Floki replies, taking Athelstan’s sleeve and pulling him forward.  This way is better than being pulled like a dog on a rope, Athelstan thinks with the resigned irony of the enslaved.  He moves forward.

“I am a shipbuilder,” Floki says, and he leads Athelstan without looking forward, at the path ahead of them, or down, to see what rocks might turn his ankles.  Instead, his gaze is directed skyward – or rather, treeward, as Athelstan soon realizes.  “I see the skeletons of ships here.”

Athelstan frowns, looking around.  All he sees are trees.  “Is that why you paint your eyes?” he asked.

Floki gives him an enigmatic look over his shoulder, and no reply.  “And I built the boat that carried us west, to your land.  I cut the planks and smoothed them with my own hands.  I made every peg.”

He built the boat with the red sail and the head of a beast, Athelstan thinks.  He is overrun by memories.  The dark smell of wet earth and moss changes to the coppery smell of terror and death.  Floki, ahead of him, appears like a devil leading him down to hell.  Athelstan stumbles on a stump and thinks it a corpse.

“Here,” Floki says and yanks Athelstan forward, nearly running him nose-first into a tree and startling him quite effectively from his trance.  “Come on, come on.”  With exaggerated gestures, he implies that Athelstan should touch the tree.

Athelstan complies, reaching up and placing his palms flat on the rough surface.  It’s cracked and creased, and there are little ants running up and down the bark.

“There is a fine plank within this tree,” Floki says.  He is next to Athelstan, his hands also on the bark.  His expression is rapturous as he looks up.  “A plank that could become a ship.  Can you see it?”

Athelstan frowns and looks up at the tree.  It has a long trunk, with green boughs waving in the wind at the top.  “I don’t understand,” he says.

“ _Feel_ the tree,” Floki urges him.  “Close your eyes.  Try to feel it.  Feel inside of it.”

Bewildered, Athelstan closes his eyes.  He feels the tree, the strength and beauty of God’s creation.  He feels an insect crawl across the back of his hand, and opens his eyes, stepping away from the tree to shake off the ants.

“Did you feel it?” Floki asks.  “The ship within the tree.”

“No,” Athelstan says, bewildered.

Floki sighs and shakes his head.  “You could be a shipbuilder,” he says.  “The finest of shipbuilders.  I see it in your eyes, you know.”  He leans in and peers at Athelstan closely, reaching out and placing three fingers on his cheek, underneath his right eye.  “But you have closed yourself off.”

Growing nervous under the intense scrutiny, Athelstan takes a step back.  “I don’t understand,” he repeats, and looks over his shoulder.  He can see Ragnar’s house from here, and contemplates running for it.  From one madman to another.

Floki stares at him a moment longer, dark-rimmed eyes intense, head tilted to the side like a bird, before he grins, showing all of his teeth.  “Neither do I,” he replies, laughing, and grabs Athelstan’s sleeve, tugging him forward.  “I’ll race you back to Ragnar’s house!”

Then he is gone, careening down the slope.  Much later, when Athelstan returns to the homestead, wet habit over his arm, there is no sign of Floki.  Bjorn is waiting for him.

“Where were you?” Ragnar’s child demands, crossing his arms over his chest.  Athelstan rarely has pretensions of equality, and they always evaporate when this boy makes a point of ordering him around.

Athelstan sighs.  “In the forest,” he replies, and goes to hang up his habit to dry.  To his surprise, Bjorn asks no more questions.

\---

Floki returns a week later and announces his presence by flicking pebbles at Athelstan, who is tending the pigs, a chore he had in his village as a child and one he has resumed now, as Ragnar’s servant.

When Athelstan turns, he expects to see Gyda or Bjorn, but is not at all surprised that his tormenter is Floki.  “What do you want?” he asks wearily, tossing the last of the food to the pigs and making sure the gate is latched securely.

“I am visiting Ragnar,” Floki replies, giving his wide, mad grin.  “We are to talk of ships and summer raids.”

“Then why are you not with him?” Athelstan asks dully, heading to the water to wash his hands and face.

“He is with his wife,” Floki says, waggling his eyebrows and capering along behind Athelstan, who is making a valiant effort to ignore his antics.

Athelstan sighs.  “Yes,” he replies, squatting down by the water and offering a silent prayer for patience.

“And I want to ask you about your god,” Floki continues, sitting cross-legged beside him.  He dips his fingers in the water, splashing some of it in Athelstan’s direction.  Athelstan is reminded perversely of holy water.  “Is he dead?”

“He died,” Athelstan replied, finally looking at Floki.  He feels rewarded by and curious about the Northman’s newfound interest in God.  “But after three days, He rose again.”

Floki frowns.  “He died and then he came back,” he repeated.  “It is fitting for a god to return from the dead.  How did he die?”

“He was nailed to a...”  Athelstan frowns.  He doesn’t know the word for the Holy Cross in this language.  “A _crux_ ,” he says finally, resorting to Latin.

“ _Crux_ ,” Floki replies, letting the word roll off his tongue.  “And what is this _crux_ on which your god died?”

Athelstan frowns and endeavors to explain.  “It is two pieces of wood,” he says.  “They intersect... here,” and he draws a cross in the sand.  “It was huge.”

“Planks!” Floki crows, poring over Athelstan’s drawing.  “Two large planks of wood, intersecting.  Were they lashed together?  Or held together with pegs?  How did they kill a god with this?”

“They nailed Him to it,” Athelstan replies shortly.  There is something macabre in Floki’s delighted curiosity.  “They drove the nails through His wrists and His feet.  And He hung there until He died.”  He thinks of the Psalm: _They have pierced my hands and feet.  I can count all my bones_.

But Floki will not understand.  Even now, he frowns.  “Who killed him?  Other gods?”

“Men,” Athelstan replies.  “Like you or I.  They feared Him, so they arrested Him and tried Him, and the crowd yelled for Him to die.”  He crossed himself on impulse.  He had never liked the brutality and betrayal of that part of the Passion.

“Men?”  Floki scoffs.  “Men cannot kill a god.  Your god must be weak.  Why would he let himself be killed by men?”

“To save us from our sins,” Athelstan snaps.  “Because God so loved the world that He gave his only son to save us, and He descended into death and defeated the Evil One and rose triumphant on the third day, to open the gates of heaven and eternal paradise.”

Floki looks confused.  “You tell me that you have one god, but then you say that the god the men killed was the son of your god.  So that means you have two gods.”

Agitated, Athelstan runs a hand over his scalp.  It’s an old habit, one he keeps even though his tonsure has nearly grown out.  “There’s God,” he says, “and His son is Jesus.  But Jesus Christ is God.  They are one.”

“Yet they are different,” Floki points out.  “How else could your god cry out to his father?  He cannot sacrifice himself to himself.”

“Jesus is God _incarnate_ ,” Athelstan says.  He’s frustrated.  His time at Lindisfarne has prepared him to spend hours debating the finer points of the Incarnation, but he has never learned how to explain it to someone for whom Christianity is a completely new paradigm.  “He is God given human flesh.  The Word...”

Floki watches at him, bemused and indulgent.  His elbows are resting on his knees and he cups his chin in his hand.  He looks like he’s listening to a child telling stories.

Athelstan thinks hard, but in the end can find no better way to explain it than John the Evangelist, who discussed the mystery of the Incarnation so simply and so beautifully in the beginning of his Gospel.  He translates the Latin as best he can.

“In the beginning... there was the Word,” he says slowly.  “The Word was with God, but the Word also _was_ God.  All things were created through Him.”  He closes his eyes as the words move him with their power, strengthening him.  “Without Him, nothing was made.  Life was in Him, and that life was the light of mankind.  The light shines in the darkness.  And the darkness has not overcome it.”

“You sound like a _skald_ ,” Floki says, and then, when Athelstan opens his eyes to give him an uncomprehending look, elaborates.  “A man who tells stories, but the stories are songs.  I could have been a _skald_ , but now I am a shipbuilder and my ships are my stories.  Perhaps I have seen you wrongly,” he adds, and leans forward so that his face is uncomfortably close.  “Perhaps you are not a shipbuilder, but a poet.”

Athelstan frowns.  “I am telling you the Gospel,” he says.  When he dreamed of evangelizing... it was not like this.  “This is what is written.”

“ _Skalds_ do not have to make their own poetry,” Floki says and grins.  “You know,” he adds, “according to the _skalds_ , our god, Odin Allfather, also hung from a tree.  But he did this to himself, and for himself, to get the runes.”

“Odin,” Athelstan repeats.  He knows the name; Ragnar and others have mentioned it many times.  “Is he the chief?  Of your... gods?”  He feels he shouldn’t be asking questions about this.  He shouldn’t be interested at all.  But he feels woefully ignorant here, and the more he knows, the safer he can make himself.  Of this, he is sure.

“Chief...”  Floki considers that, then shrugs.  “He is the Allfather.  But he is also Odin Wanderer, Odin Terrible One, Odin Spearman.  He plucked out his own eye for wisdom, but he loves the heat of battle.”  Floki grins again and looks as mad as usual.  “He is powerful, and would not be killed by men.”

Athelstan thinks about power.  Jesus comes as a lamb, but the Northmen preferred the lions, roaring loudly but ultimately, he reminds himself, defeated.  Ultimately brought low before the power of the One God.

“Floki!” someone calls.  Both of them look up – Floki, curious, Athelstan, feeling strangely guilty.  The shipbuilder is being hailed by Ragnar, who is walking towards them and waving.  “Get inside, man.  We’ve been waiting for you.”

Floki looks at Athelstan and raises both of his eyebrows high, as if they share in some private joke.  Athelstan looks away, and when he turns back, Floki is already up and hurrying into the house.

Ragnar is still walking towards him though, and reluctantly, Athelstan stands.

“Were you having a good conversation?” Ragnar asks him, grinning.  “I think he likes you, you know.  Floki hardly talks to people for that length of time.”

“No,” Athelstan says immediately, shaking his head.  “I hope not,” he adds, glancing at Ragnar, who is often joking with him.

But Ragnar looks serious – as serious as he can be, when not in battle.  He claps Athelstan on the shoulder.  “Do not take Floki’s friendship lightly,” he says.  “He is a good man to have on your side.”  And with that, he turns back to the house, leaving Athelstan to stare out over the lake and, perhaps, to pray.

\---

The days are getting shorter, and quickly.  Athelstan is not accustomed to the vicissitudes of climate offered by the far north.  He shivers in his bed at night.

Floki comes to them with news which he gives in exchange for food.  Athelstan doesn’t much listen to the tales of the Earl and his increasing paranoia.  His place is here, in the homestead, and its politics are the only politics that concern him.

(That, and Athelstan does not like the Earl, remembers him as a cruel and callous, proud old man.  Not to be liked or trusted.)

Later, Athelstan is outside, standing with his arms folded, gazing over the lake.  “The heavens proclaim the glory of God,” he says quietly, reciting a psalm and meditating on it.  “The skies proclaim the work of his hands.  “Day after day they reveal speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.”

“ _Skald_ ,” Floki whispers into his ear, and Athelstan jumps and nearly trips over the hem of his robes.  He did not hear Floki approaching.

He hears Floki now, though, crowing with laughter.  Athelstan turns to look at the man, glaring.  “What is it you want?” he demands.  “Why aren’t you inside with Ragnar?”

“I told him I wished to speak with you,” Floki said, and grinned at Athelstan.  “And your kind not-master, he granted my wish.”

Athelstan sighs heavily and looks away over the water.  Whatever peace he had gained while reciting the psalm was now gone, scattered over the lake.  “What is it you want to speak with me about?” he asks.

“It has been a long time since we have talked,” Floki replies.  “And I enjoy your conversation, strange though it is.”  He gives a hooting laugh, which scares the goats in their pen; Athelstan hears a few sleepy bleats.  “I hear the land to the west is more temperate,” he continues.  “This winter will be your first, here in the north.”

This is a thought that has been worrying Athelstan.  He wonders if he will survive – and whether it will be such a bad thing, if he does not.  “Yes,” he says, meeting Floki’s eyes.

“It will be cold,” Floki says, grinning so that his eyes, with the dark paint underneath them, crinkle up.  “Tell me, does your god know the cold?”

“He was born in the winter,” Athelstan replies.  “In a stable, because there was no room for Him in... the dwellings.  His parents were visiting the town of Bethlehem.  They didn’t live there.”

“Parents,” Floki mutters, and for a few moments Athelstan thinks they’re going to get right back to discussing the mystery of the Incarnation.  But the conversation passes right over it.  “If your god was also a man... did he eat and drink with his brothers?”

“Yes,” Athelstan replies.  “He broke bread with them.”

Floki grins.  “What a hospitable god you have.  He sounds like Thor, who will not pass up a chance to feast.”

The comparison makes Athelstan frown.  “Not like Thor,” he says.  “Your gods are too much like men.”

“What else is a god supposed to be, than like a man?” Floki asks, giving Athelstan a strange look. 

“ _Better_ than a man,” Athelstan replies.  “Because men are wicked creatures, fallen from God’s grace.  We _sin_ , and are saved by His mercy.”

Floki frowns.  “What is _sin_?”

Athelstan doesn’t know the translation.  “It’s... acting against the Will of God.  Contrary to His laws, or His plan.”

“Acting without honor,” Floki interprets.  “A man without honor is nothing.”

Athelstan frowns.  He doesn’t quite like that comparison.  “A man may have honor,” he says.  “But no man is free from _sin_.”

Floki frowns.  “ _Sin_ ,” he repeats.  “It is evil, but every man has it?  This sounds like a strange riddle, priest.  Is this what your skalds told you?  Perhaps it has another meaning.”  He squats down and begins to draw swirls in the sand.  It’s getting dark quickly and Athelstan can barely see what he is making.

“It’s not a riddle,” he says.  “It’s... how life is.  Man fell from grace, and Jesus must save us.”

“But if no man can be free from _sin_ , then why would he try?  Does the battle grant him honor?”  Floki looks up at Athelstan.  His eyes and teeth are bright in the dim light.  “Gods are supposed to be like men.  Otherwise, how can men emulate the gods?”

Athelstan feels, not for the first time, that he is talking at a wall.  There is a chasm of misunderstandings between them.  Floki seems incapable of understanding Athelstan’s religion, and to Athelstan, Floki’s gods are idols, perhaps even devils.  Athelstan wants to bridge that gap, but not with Floki, who seems to ask him these questions only to laugh and poke holes in his explanations.  Athelstan wants to talk to someone whose interest is genuine, whose faith could be true.

Even Ragnar, in this aspect, is better than Floki.

“Come here,” Floki says when Athelstan does not reply to his question, beckoning for him to bend down.

Athelstan complies without thinking, squatting beside Floki in the sand.  Now that he is closer, he sees that Floki has been drawing some sort of animal, a serpent or a dragon, with a head and neck made of smooth, curved lines.

“I told Ragnar you should help me build a ship for the summer,” Floki says, and as he speaks, he adds a stern to his drawing, and a mast.  The dragon becomes a ship.  “He accused me of stealing away that which was his by rights.  But I see it in you.”  He turns abruptly, so quickly that their faces are close together and Athelstan falls back, startled by his proximity.

He hits the ground with a thump and an undignified squawk, making Floki laugh.  “I don’t know the first thing about building ships,” Athelstan says, and remains seated on the ground so he will not embarrass himself further.

“Which is why you need to learn,” Floki said, and nodded to himself.  “You are a shipbuilder here.”  He pressed his closed fist to his heart in some odd sort of salute.

Athelstan thinks of the smooth, sleek lines of the Northmen’s ships, which have not yet become disassociated with the horror of Lindisfarne, the despair of slavery, the cold weight of a dead man’s head on his shoulder.  Even though he is sitting sprawled on the dirt where he fell, he meets Floki’s eyes and lifts his chin.  “Even if you were to teach me, I would not learn.  I will not build the ships you use to kill and enslave my people.”

Floki meets his eyes for a moment, a grave and deadly look in his expression.  Then he laughs, and turns his head away.  “You are too stubborn.  No wonder you cannot look into the trees.  You are an incomplete man.”

“It is dishonorable to betray your home, and your family,” Athelstan snaps, trying to frame his thoughts in a way that Floki will understand.

Of course, Floki doesn’t care.  He bounces to his feet and, with one sweeping movement of his booted foot, erases the drawing of a ship.  The motion sends up a cloud of dust that makes Athelstan sneeze.  “This is your home now,” Floki says, bending down to lean close while Athelstan is still distracted.  His grin is, as usual, mad.  “And we, your family.”

He capers away, back to Ragnar’s house.  Athelstan sneezes again and then wipes his watering eyes, getting slowly to his feet.  He doesn’t want to think about Floki’s comment.  In fact, he doesn’t want to think about Floki at all.  Their conversations always end with Floki laughing and Athelstan vexed.

Instead of dwelling on his anger, Athelstan walks along the lake shore.  Ragnar and Floki will be talking for a while yet; there is no need for him to go back to the house so soon.  So he breathes in and tries to enjoy the quiet twilight, despite the increasing cold.

He wants to pray but his mood has changed.  The psalm to nature is not the one he wants to sing now.  So, softly, he begins to recite another: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  Lord, hear my voice.”

He has been growing used to this sort of life, he reflects as he recites.  Perhaps he has become _too_ comfortable with it.  Perhaps Floki was sent from God as a message, to remind him that this is not the place where he belongs.

Athelstan is so immersed in his thoughts that he nearly runs into a tree.  He has walked far enough along the shore that he has come to the fringes of the forest.

“Amen,” he says, finishing the psalm and crossing himself.  Then he looks up at the tree.  In spite of himself, he wonders what Floki would make of it.  Recalling their first meeting, and the trip to the forest, Athelstan places both hands to the tree, which is strong and firm beneath them.

He imagines what finished products lie slumbering now beneath the gift of God’s creation, closing his eyes and trying to feel them.  Perhaps there are two planks here.  Two planks, when sanded and joined, could make a ship... or a cross.

Athelstan turns back towards Ragnar’s homestead, which stands as a warm, lighted beacon in the midst of this dark and wild land.  It is getting too cold for him out here.  With a sigh, he turns his back on the tree and makes his way to the house.

**Author's Note:**

>   * The main difference between Christianity and Norse Paganism can be simplified and typified by "good vs. evil" for the former and "order vs. chaos" for the latter, but those dichotomies aren't analogous; chaos was not regarded as evil by the Northmen and the representative of chaos, Loki, often served as companion and brother to Odin and, to an extent, Thor.
>   * It's unclear as to how much of Norse Paganism was influenced by Christianity or, vice versa, how much of Christianity in the north was influenced by Norse Paganism.  At this point, in the 8th century, the two religions had not yet mingled as much as they would in the future.  Looking back and researching, though, it's difficult to determine where these influences end and begin.  After all, religions are always changing.
>   * For example, the story about Odin hanging himself on a tree for nine days comes from Hávamál, a book of wisdom attributed to Odin.  The Hávamál itself is part of the  _Poetic Edda_ , an Icelandic text that comes from the  _Codex Regius._ The authorship of this text is uncertain, but it might have been compiled and written by a Christian, as was the case of the _Prose Edda,_ another major source text for Norse myth.  So how much about this story changed and developed over time, and how much was changed by the person who wrote it down? _  
> _
>   * Odin says that he "sacrificed himself to himself" as he hung on a tree, and I tried to echo that paradox in Athelstan's retelling of the Crucifixion.  As the date the Hávamál was created is uncertain, I hypothesized that the story itself, as we have it today, might have appropriated certain Christian aspects at a later date.  Thus, Floki asks, "How can a god sacrifice himself to himself?" in a prescient foreshadowing of this later story.
>   * I'm honestly not sure about the use of the psalms in the early church, especially in the early Anglo-Saxon church, but they make for good poetry and good literary devices. Athelstan quotes, in order: Psalm 22 "They have pierced my hands and feet, I can count all my bones," Psalm 19 "The heavens proclaim the glory of God," and Psalm 130 "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord."
> 



End file.
